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      J.D. Vance’s Rise From ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Author to Senate Nominee

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      Before the 2016 election, J.D. Vance called Donald J. Trump “cultural heroin” and a demagogue who was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”On Tuesday, Mr. Vance’s triumph in a crowded Republican field for Senate in Ohio was thanks largely to an endorsement, late in the race, from the former president he once denounced.The conversion of Mr. Vance, an author and venture capitalist, from Trump skeptic to full-on Trump ally might fill a second memoir, a sequel to his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance’s story of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio. When that book was published in 2016, it was devoured by the “coastal elites” he now rails against as a means for them to decode white working-class support for Mr. Trump.Mr. Vance’s book pointed inward to explain the woes of his community: He blamed a personal “lack of agency” for drug abuse, welfare dependency and chaotic lives. But as a politician, he has pointed the finger outward, at external enemies, just as Mr. Trump did.On the campaign trail, Mr. Vance blamed corporations for shipping jobs to China and accused liberals of opening borders to cheap labor and opioid traffickers. The intimate voice of “Hillbilly Elegy” yielded to a darker tone and language. He castigated “idiots” in Washington and “scumbags” in the news media.Mr. Vance announced his campaign for the Senate last year in Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.Jeffrey Dean/Associated PressHis critics, including Republican rivals in Ohio, said he had turned himself inside-out to mimic Mr. Trump’s bellicosity in pursuit of votes. Opponents spent millions on attack ads to remind voters that Mr. Vance had once called himself “a Never Trump guy” and had said some voters backed Mr. Trump “for racist reasons.”Mr. Vance, on a slog across Ohio he called the “No B.S. Town Hall Tour,” explained to modest crowds that he had undergone a political evolution, recognizing that Mr. Trump was right on issue after issue.“I was like, ‘Man, you know, when Trump says the elites are fundamentally corrupt, they don’t care about the country that has made them who they are, he was actually telling the truth,’” he told a conservative podcaster last year.Today, Mr. Vance, who graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University and went on to Yale Law School, has found a political home with the movement known as national conservatism, an effort to add an intellectual framework to Trumpism. National conservatives lean right on issues like diversity and immigration restrictions but lean left on economics, opposing unfettered free trade, especially with China.Mr. Vance at a rally hosted by Mr. Trump in Delaware, Ohio, last month, after his endorsement.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMr. Vance, 37, grew up in Middletown, Ohio, where a grandfather had moved from Kentucky for a steel mill job. In the years after J.D. Vance was born in 1984, the city hollowed out as blue-collar jobs left, opioids arrived, marriages dissolved and much of the industrial Midwest became “a hub of misery” for the white working class, he wrote in his memoir.Mr. Vance’s mother, Bev, struggled with drug addiction. He was raised largely by his maternal grandparents, particularly the grandmother he called Mamaw, who “loved the Lord,” “loved the F-word” and owned 19 handguns, he said on the campaign trail.Out of high school, Mr. Vance enlisted in the Marines and served in Iraq as a public affairs officer. He returned home a man in a hurry, sailing through Ohio State in under two years.At Yale, he met a fellow student he would marry, Usha Chilukuri, who went on to clerk for an appeals court judge, Brett M. Kavanaugh. Democrats’ fierce opposition to Mr. Trump’s nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 appeared to be a turning point in Mr. Vance’s political transformation.“Trump’s popularity in the Vance household went up substantially during the Kavanaugh fight,” he recalled in 2019.Mr. Vance went to work as a venture capitalist in San Francisco for Peter Thiel, a billionaire founder of PayPal, whom he had heard speak at Yale. Mr. Thiel, a Silicon Valley conservative, also influenced Mr. Vance’s politics, especially his opposition to China and to immigration.Mr. Vance with Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, at Allen & Company’s annual conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 2017.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Vance moved his family, which now includes three children, back to Ohio, he raised money from Mr. Thiel for a venture capital fund of his own — and followed the Thiel tradition by naming the business, Narya Capital, with a “Lord of the Rings” reference.Mr. Thiel poured $13.5 million into a political action committee to support Mr. Vance’s race.As a candidate, Mr. Vance had struggled to translate celebrity as an author into broad recognition and support from the Republican base. He was perpetually running behind his rivals in polling, and Mr. Thiel’s millions were nearly gone.But all that turned around with Mr. Trump’s endorsement on April 15. Most of the Republican field had aggressively auditioned for the former president’s seal of approval. Mr. Vance first pitched Mr. Trump at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago brokered by Mr. Thiel. Donald Trump Jr. and the Fox News host Tucker Carlson also lobbied for Mr. Vance.“J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past,” Mr. Trump said in announcing his choice, “but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.” More

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      Tim Ryan Will be the Democrats’ Nominee for Senate in Ohio

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      Representative Tim Ryan cruised to victory in the Democratic primary election for Senate in his state, running in a moderate lane focused on tackling jobs, manufacturing and taking on China.Mr. Ryan’s victory, called by The Associated Press, came as little surprise. He had long been considered the clear front-runner in the contest for the seat of Senator Rob Portman, an establishment Republican who is retiring.But Mr. Ryan faced a challenger to his left in Morgan Harper, a progressive lawyer. She attacked him over his donations from energy companies and championed policies like “Medicare for All” and an overhaul of the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.Mr. Ryan, a onetime presidential candidate who has long sought to appeal to blue-collar workers in northeastern Ohio, visited all 88 counties in the state in a bet that voters of all leanings were tired of far-right and far-left positions in American politics. He sought to appeal to the “exhausted majority,” a phrase coined by researchers to describe the estimated two-thirds of voters who are less polarized and who feel overlooked.He has been waiting in the wings, as a crowded Republican campaign has at times turned ugly. The candidates aggressively pursued Donald J. Trump’s endorsement before the former president threw his support to J.D. Vance, and they took aim at undocumented immigrants, transgender youths’ participation in sports and teachings on race and gender in schools.Yet Mr. Ryan also drew criticism for fear-mongering in some of his messaging, including in his first television commercial. It centered on the nation’s fight to beat China on manufacturing, but some Asian advocacy groups and elected officials described the ad as racist and called on him to take it down.Mr. Ryan condemned anti-Asian violence but did not back down, saying that he had been speaking specifically about government policies under the Chinese Communist Party that have hurt Ohio workers.His chances of success in the general election in the fall are considered relatively low, given a national political environment that is unfriendly to his party and the increasingly conservative tilt of Ohio, which voted for Mr. Trump in the last two presidential elections.But an upset victory by Mr. Ryan could carry lessons for national Democrats in the Midwest on how to counter the appeal of Trumpism and win back white working-class voters who used to form a large part of the Democratic base in the industrial heart of the country. More

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      When Will We Have Results in Ohio and Indiana’s Primary Contests?

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      As we have said before, predicting the timing of election results is not an exact science. It can be downright messy. And surely, every election night is different.Many factors can contribute to how late, or how early, results are reported: when polls close, what time election officials can start tabulating absentee ballots and how close races are, to name a few.For the marquee races in Ohio, like the closely watched U.S. Senate primary, the secretary of state said it would begin posting unofficial results on its website at 8 p.m. Eastern time, half an hour after voting ends. In 2020, about half the vote had been counted by 8:30 p.m. in Ohio, said Stephen Ohlemacher, the election decision editor for The Associated Press.Absentee ballots can’t be tabulated in Ohio until the polls close, and are then counted first, according to Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the secretary of state. As of Friday, about 162,000 ballots had already been cast in Ohio through the mail or via early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday, according to The A.P. In 2018, there were about 280,000 ballots cast before the primary in Ohio, which The A.P. estimated was 17 percent of the total vote.Results for U.S. House races in Ohio will appear on county-level board of election websites before the secretary of state’s, putting the onus on the candidates, political parties and news media to tally results for each county in a congressional district. The secretary of state’s office cited Ohio’s back-and-forth on redrawing congressional maps as the root cause of the delay in updating their website.Indiana expects to start posting results on the secretary of state’s website shortly after polls close — which is 6 p.m. local time, whether in the part of the state that is in the Eastern time zone or in the Central time zone. Election officials in the state can begin counting absentee ballots on the day of an election, but cannot post any results until after the polls close.As of Monday morning, 146,365 ballots had been cast statewide, both through the mail and early, in-person voting, which ended on Monday in Indiana, according to The A.P. The total ballots cast in the 2018 primary was 173,000. More

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      What to Watch in Ohio and Indiana Primary Elections Tuesday

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      Ohio’s primary elections almost weren’t going to happen Tuesday. A heated and confusing legal battle over the redrawing of congressional districts kept voters waiting for a final map. And in last-hour negotiations, elections officials took all of the statehouse races off the May 3 primary ballot, leaving them to be decided at a later date.But all eyes remain on the state, with one marquee matchup at the top of the list: the crowded, heated and expensive Republican Senate primary.More so than many other contests across the nation, the Ohio Senate race to replace Rob Portman, an establishment Republican who is retiring, will test former President Donald J. Trump’s influence on his party, and whether Republican voters have an appetite for hard-right, anti-establishment figures in his mold — or only for those with his seal of approval. The results could also give Democrats a better idea of their chances to secure the open seat in November.Once considered a national bellwether in the industrial heart of the country, Ohio has tilted Republican in the last two presidential elections, and Republicans control all levels of government. Senate candidates from both parties have been aggressively courting the white working-class voters who have left the Democratic Party in droves since Mr. Trump was first on the ballot in 2016.The campaign has been at times contentious and ugly. It has also been high-priced. Cash has poured into the race — from major super PACs and from candidates’ personal coffers — making it one of the most expensive of this election cycle. Major donors include the Protect Ohio Values PAC, largely funded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, who is supporting Mr. Vance, and the Buckeye Leadership Fund, which is backing Matt Dolan, a former Ohio state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.Indiana’s primary also features some notable elections with implications for the direction of the Republican Party. This year, more incumbents at the state level are facing primary challengers from the right than in at least a decade, according to a review by The Indianapolis Star, potentially resulting in an even more conservative legislative supermajority.North of Indianapolis, in Hamilton County, the re-election campaign of the prosecutor D. Lee Buckingham against Greg Garrison, a conservative talk-show host, is garnering outsize attention: Mr. Garrison has the support of former Vice President Mike Pence.Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Delware, Ohio last month.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTrump’s role as kingmakerMr. Trump rocked the Senate race landscape in Ohio last month when he threw his highly coveted endorsement behind J.D. Vance. A venture capitalist and the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Mr. Vance has been heavily backed by Mr. Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.On the campaign trail, Mr. Vance has sought to atone for his past negative comments about Mr. Trump. Polls have shown a significant bump for Mr. Vance, but no clear front-runner has emerged.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.David McIntosh’s anti-tax Club for Growth, which had first opposed Mr. Trump’s 2016 before supporting him, is pitching for a battle. The G.O.P. group has put its support behind Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer, who went from reluctant Trump supporter in 2016 to one of the nation’s most ardent backers of Trumpism.Other Republican Senate hopefuls include Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, who has been endorsed by Mr. Portman and has campaigned with the former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway, and Mike Gibbons, a financier who has outspent all of the candidates in the race. He has at times been at the top of the polls with a sales pitch similar to Mr. Trump’s, reminding audiences he is not a politician but a businessman.Still, Ohio voters might decide they do not want a Trump-centered candidate at all. The only Republican running in this lonely lane has been Mr. Dolan, who says he supports Mr. Trump but has made him less of a focus in the campaign. Unlike the top candidates in the race, he recognizes President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Is there an ‘exhausted majority’?On the Democratic side of the Senate race, Representative Tim Ryan is considered the front-runner. He faces a challenge from the left by Morgan Harper, a progressive lawyer and a senior adviser at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under former President Barack Obama.Mr. Ryan has been visiting with voters across the state in a bet that they have had enough of the extremism in American politics and might be willing to elect a Democrat to a seat formerly held by a Republican. He is seeking to appeal to the “exhausted majority,” a phrase coined by researchers to describe the estimated two-thirds of voters who are less polarized and who feel overlooked.It will be interesting to see if such an electorate manifests itself in Ohio — and if it goes for Mr. Ryan or for Mr. Dolan on the other side of the aisle.Success for Mr. Ryan in the fall could carry lessons for Democrats across the Midwest on how to counter the appeal of Trumpism and the erosion of support for the party among the white working-class — voters who once formed a loyal part of the Democratic base.Representative Shontel Brown with supporters in Lakewood, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesNina Turner speaks with children during a campaign event in South Euclid, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesThe rematch between Nina Turner and Shontel BrownRepresentative Shontel Brown narrowly defeated Nina Turner, a former state senator and a top surrogate for Bernie Sanders, in a Democratic primary last year that was seen as somewhat of a proxy battle between the party’s progressive and establishment wings.The two were vying for a seat vacated by Marcia L. Fudge after President Biden appointed her as the secretary of housing and urban development. The race attracted big Democratic names and millions of dollars, with Ms. Brown, then a Cuyahoga County councilwoman, drawing support from Hillary Clinton and the highest-ranking Black member of the House, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina.This year, major establishment figures have once more endorsed Ms. Brown, including President Biden and Mr. Clyburn. She now also has the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.Ms. Turner previously was attacked for taking anti-Israel positions — and for using language that some said echoed anti-Semitic tropes — as well as for a crass denunciation of President Biden. This time around, she has aggressively courted Jewish voters. She has the ground-game support of Our Revolution, a progressive political action organization that emerged from Mr. Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign. The group’s 150 volunteers have centered on building support for Ms. Turner through one-on-one conversations with voters.Will Ohio have a shot at a female governor?The former congressman Jim Renacci is one of several Republican candidates who are trying to seize on their party’s internal divisions to unseat G.O.P. governors. But Mr. Renacci seems to be gaining little traction against Gov. Mike DeWine, a longtime Ohio politician who has been working to attract the support of Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters.In the Democratic primary, two former mayors — John Cranley of Cincinnati and Nan Whaley of Dayton — are facing off, with Ms. Whaley seeking to become the first woman elected governor in the state. More

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      In Ohio Senate Fight, G.O.P. Shows Strains of Its Identity Crisis

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      CLEVELAND — The homestretch of Ohio’s contentious Republican Senate primary has revealed a party united in its conviction that American values, indeed the nation’s way of life, are under attack, but divided on whether to embrace a strict isolationism to address its mounting misgivings about global interconnectedness and American leadership abroad.That divide has played out in policy differences — some subtle, others glaring — in the candidates’ approach to the economy, immigration and foreign policy. The strains reflect the broader splits in a party undergoing something of an identity crisis, with ideological conservatives, the old Republican establishment of big business, and the Trump-inspired newer rank and file all pulling in different directions.At the same time, Republicans have been searching for ways to relate to former President Donald J. Trump himself: a few by taking tentative steps away from him, others by falling in line with him wholeheartedly.All of the candidates competing in the primary on Tuesday appear united in their fierce opposition to the Biden administration, as they have sought to paint a nation grappling with rising food and energy prices, a “radical” Democratic Party overreaching on issues of race and gender, and what they describe as apocalyptic conditions at the U.S.-Mexico border.But the world beyond Mexico may be the brightest dividing line in the Republican Party, with conservatives split on what to do about Russian aggression, how far to distance the United States from its traditional alliances, and above all what to do about China, at once the nation’s biggest competitor and one of its largest economic partners.Over the past weeks, Josh Mandel, Ohio’s former treasurer and the onetime front-runner in the Senate primary, attacked a rival, Mike Gibbons, for making money off investments in China. J.D. Vance, the author and venture capital executive, attacked Mr. Mandel for accepting the help of the Club for Growth, the business-backed political group which he said supported business relations with China. And the sole woman in the race, Jane Timken, shares her last name with a company that is synonymous with Ohio manufacturing might — and that includes vast operations out of Shanghai.Whoever wins Tuesday will have to deal with those divisions in the coming general election campaign, especially since the presumed Democratic candidate, Representative Tim Ryan, has no qualms about blasting China while backing U.S. involvement elsewhere.“Voters don’t always have long memories here, especially after a primary campaign, but certainly the anti-China feelings are going to resonate for a long time,” said Paul Beck, a professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University and a longtime Ohio politics watcher. “They are hard-wired.”Divisions over the border are not so stark. Anger at Mexican criminal organizations that are distributing fentanyl to the north has become particularly salient in a state that has been ground zero for the national opioid crisis and experienced some of the country’s highest overdose rates over the past three years.The fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in Sasabe, Ariz.Rebecca Noble/ReutersMr. Vance, who won Mr. Trump’s coveted endorsement, has even suggested, with a straight face but no evidence, that President Biden was intentionally allowing fentanyl into the country because of its potential to kill Republican voters, bringing the issue back to his mother, who as a nurse became addicted to pain medication. Fentanyl deaths did rise sharply in 2021, but they rose sharply in 2020 as well.“My family was very affected and is still very affected by the fentanyl that comes across the U.S. southern border into Ohio and into all parts of our country,” he told an audience in Newark, Ohio, on Saturday. “I believe that if the poison coming across the Mexican border today had been coming across 10 years ago, I would have lost my mother.”Much of the debate and bluster on the border has been lacking in substance and filled with conjecture, with candidates proposing few policy solutions, conflating immigration and crime and resorting to language that dehumanizes unauthorized immigrants.But beneath the hard-right rhetoric, subtle differences can be seen between the pro-business, establishment Republicans of the past and the ascendant hard right.In stump speeches and a much-criticized campaign ad, Mr. Vance has falsely declared that people are entering the country to vote for Democrats. He has said he is in favor of an immigration process that creates legal paths to entering the country based on merit, rather than on familial ties, long a key feature of the nation’s immigration system. And he opposes H-1B visas that allow employers to temporarily hire immigrant workers in various industries.At the other end of the issue is Matt Dolan, an Ohio state senator who has sought to put some distance between himself and the former president. Mr. Dolan, too, talks tough on immigration and the need to stop the flow of fentanyl. But he is just as concerned about economic development, supporting tax cuts, training for workers and reduced regulations for small businesses. And he favors the immigrant work visas, saying businesses rely on them.“We have to secure the border first — that has to be number one,” Mr. Dolan said in an interview last week. “And then improve our legal immigration.”State Senator Matt Dolan met supporters last week at a library opening in Bay Village, Ohio.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesPerhaps the most glaring examples in Ohio of the forces warring within the Republican Party have unfolded over competition with China, the war in Ukraine and American leadership abroad. Again setting himself apart, Mr. Vance has argued against deepening American involvement on Ukraine’s behalf — despite what many see as the gravest threat to world order in decades.Mr. Vance opposed the establishment of a European-led no-fly zone over Ukraine, and has drawn criticism for a statement he made in February in which he said he did not “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” He has since sought to assure audiences he feels Ukrainians’ pain, but has doubled down on his stance against U.S. intervention.“At the end of the day, however tragic we find these images of what is going on in Ukraine, this is not our fight,” Mr. Vance said in a debate last month.The distinctions could also be seen in the surrogates the Ohio candidates brought in to campaign with them in the final stretch.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas campaigning last week in Kettering, Ohio, on behalf of Josh Mandel, a Senate candidate.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMr. Mandel chose as his wingman for the final weekend Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who in 2016 was Mr. Trump’s biggest threat and remains fiercely conservative in ways the former president never was. Mr. Cruz has consistently attacked Mr. Biden as weak on foreign policy, going so far as to blame him for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And Mr. Cruz, like Republican congressional leaders, has shied away from some of Mr. Trump’s broader attacks on corporate America — especially the pharmaceutical industry — which often echoed Democratic talking points.Mr. Vance, by contrast, stumped over the weekend with two of the most polarizing figures of the far right: Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Ms. Greene railed against the “forever wars” started under George W. Bush and talked up what she called “the civil war in the G.O.P.,” while Mr. Gaetz blasted the leaders of his own party and said he and Ms. Greene needed backup in Washington — backup that Mr. Vance would provide.J.D. Vance, a Senate candidate from Ohio, campaigned last week with Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Gibbons, for his part, campaigned with Senator Rand Paul, the Kentuckian who espouses small government, low taxes and the avoidance of foreign entanglements at all cost. And Mr. Gibbons embraced a fringe movement to hold a constitutional convention aimed at curbing federal power, and mocked the Department of Homeland Security’s new effort to counter disinformation as an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.One area in which there is broad agreement among the party’s Senate candidates is on the conservative values many Ohio Republicans say they hold dear, from old standbys like support for gun rights and opposition to abortion, to current causes like preventing transgender women from playing women’s sports and giving parents greater control over how race and gender are taught in schools.On those issues, consensus among the candidates was so fully realized that voters at events in Cleveland seemed widely split over whom to support, and many were still undecided.In Port Clinton, where Ms. Timken, Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Dolan all worked the crowd at a Knights of Columbus chicken barbecue lunch, Lisa Slobodzian said she was still sifting through her direct mail and studying the candidates’ positions.“I want power back to the people,” said Ms. Slobodzian, 57, a retired national parks ranger and law enforcement specialist, digging into her plate. “They should decide what their kids are taught in schools, and not some government agency.” More

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      How Ohio’s Map Will Test J.D. Vance’s Political Allure

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      Behind the wild language, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author’s bid for a Senate seat follows a traditional Republican playbook.Theodore Roosevelt, a renowned political animal and polymath, once said, “I think there is only one thing in the world I can’t understand, and that is Ohio politics.”It is indeed a complicated place, shaped by its history as America’s first frontier state. Since the country’s founding, Ohio has been settled over the years by various ethnic groups searching for prosperity west of the Appalachian Mountains. Once a bellwether in American politics, Ohio is losing that status as its population grows older, whiter and more culturally conservative. But its patchwork of wildly different regions makes it a fascinating state to watch regardless.“Ohio is one of those places whose narrative is more often told from the outside rather than from within,” said David Giffels, the author of “Barnstorming Ohio,” a book on the state’s political and cultural geography.“We are the boring middle of American politics,” Giffels added. “And I do mean that in a loving way.”Ohio’s major population centers form a diagonal axis that slashes across the state from Cleveland in the northeast through Columbus down to Cincinnati in the southwest, along the I-71 corridor. There are as many as 12 media markets in the state, whose population of 11.8 million people sprawls across nearly 45,000 square miles.As a result, said Kyle Kondik, an election forecaster and author of a book about Ohio politics, “there’s not really a strong center to the vote in the state.”Ohio is holding primary elections on Tuesday that will give us the first major electoral test of Donald Trump’s influence on the Republican Party since he left office. By endorsing J.D. Vance in the state’s Republican Senate primary, Trump has single-handedly vaulted Mr. Vance, the venture capitalist and celebrity author, to the front of a crowded field.A forecast for low turnoutBut Vance’s victory in the primary is no sure thing. Although the candidates have spent nearly $70 million bludgeoning one another on television, voters don’t seem to be especially motivated by the chance to pick a replacement for Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring. Turnout in the race is expected to be low.“With Trump not on the ballot, I don’t think this race is top of mind for most voters,” said Thomas Sutton, the director of the Community Research Institute at Baldwin Wallace University, which conducts polls of Ohio voters.That could help Matt Dolan, a traditional Republican who is likely to draw support from party regulars and upper-income voters in the suburbs. Under this theory, casual voters who may be swayed by Trump’s late endorsement of Vance are less likely to show up.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The 2022 election season is underway. See the full primary calendar and a detailed state-by-state breakdown.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Dolan allies suggest, too, that because the other candidates will divide the hard-core Trump vote among themselves, Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has an opportunity to eke out a plurality of the vote by scooping up more casual Trump fans. They also speculate that Gov. Mike DeWine’s strength in the primary for governor could lift Dolan among rank-and-file Republicans.Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant, said that because Dolan hadn’t been the subject of many attack ads, “he’s become the fresh face in the closing moments after the rest have a ton of damage, both self-inflicted and from paid media.”Trump held a rally last month in Delaware, Ohio, a city north of Columbus.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe five states of OhioMost analysts of Ohio divide the state into five regions: Northeast, around Cleveland; Northwest, including Toledo and the prosperous farmlands around it; Central, the booming areas in and around Columbus; Southeast, the Appalachian part of the state; and Southwest, dominated by Cincinnati and its suburbs.The Northeast is Ohio’s Democratic stronghold, the most populous, most industrialized and most diverse part of the state. But it’s also home to tens of thousands of Republican voters, so the candidates have all campaigned and advertised heavily in the region.The Southwest, which includes Vance’s hometown, Middletown, is the traditional center of Republican politics in Ohio. More Southern in perspective, it is full of bedrock Republican voters: conventional in their cultural outlook, they tend to favor free enterprise and worry about issues like crime, drugs and immigration. Vance, who now lives in Cincinnati, is holding his election night party in the city.The Southeast has been a swing area in Ohio politics, though it is also the least diverse at nearly 95 percent white. Hobbled by job losses and buffeted by the forces of globalization and economic modernization, with a lower percentage of people with college degrees, Ohio’s Appalachian region is full of “people who are angry at the world,” said John C. Green, the emeritus director of the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron.As a result, Green said, the region has a “much higher tolerance for the rough and tumble of politics” — and could gravitate toward Josh Mandel, who has campaigned as much on attitude as he has on any particular conservative ideas. A super PAC backing Mandel has been running ads on rural radio stations in the area attacking Vance as “a fraud.”In the 2016 Republican presidential primary, the Ohio map divided sharply between John Kasich, who was the sitting governor at the time, and Trump, who would of course go on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. Kasich won Ohio’s most populous counties on his way to carrying the state, while Trump cleaned up in the Appalachian communities along the Ohio River.Vance’s balancing actOne question on the minds of many Ohio watchers: How will college-educated Republicans respond to Vance?Will they flock to the Yale-educated, worldly investor lurking inside the angry MAGA warrior Vance has become? Or will they be repelled by how far right he has moved to court Trump’s base?Vance’s schedule and ad spending in the last few days of the race show a focus on suburban and small-town areas. Since Saturday, he has visited Circleville, a city south of Columbus; Cuyahoga Falls, a city north of Akron; Westlake, a suburb west of Cleveland; Dublin, a northwestern suburb of Columbus; and Mason, a northeastern suburb of Cincinnati.A super PAC supporting Vance, Protect American Values, has spent heavily on TV advertisements in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown.“On the surface, it looks like the campaign is pursuing middle-of-the-road Republican voters,” Green said.It’s a deceptively conventional strategy that you would hardly expect from the protagonist of “Hillbilly Elegy” — a story of rural communities wracked by poverty, drug addiction and what he called “learned helplessness.” Back in 2016, Vance was urging Americans to seize their own destiny, as he did by transcending his troubled childhood.“We’re no longer a country that believes in human agency, and as a formerly poor person, I find it incredibly insulting,” he said in one interview.In this campaign, Vance has courted the support of far-right characters who traffic in conspiracy theories and invective like Steve Bannon and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent days, he has accused President Biden of deliberately flooding Ohio with fentanyl, a preposterous charge without evidence.“In a way,” Giffels said, “he’s kind of selling the victimhood he railed against in the book.”What to readFrom Columbus, Ohio, our colleague Trip Gabriel reports on what’s next for Josh Mandel, a Republican whose Senate campaign has been defined by his support of Donald Trump, now that Trump has endorsed someone else.A second woman has publicly accused Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor in Nebraska who has Trump’s backing, of groping her.Even as Biden enjoyed high approval ratings early in his presidency, his lead pollster warned that immigration and inflation could cost him support.With six months until the midterms, Democrats are deeply divided over how to connect with voters and brighten the party’s prospects, Katie Glueck reports.how they runSenator Joe Manchin, left, with Representative David McKinley last year in Morgantown, W.Va.Michael Swensen/Getty ImagesManchin wades into a G.O.P. primary in West VirginiaIt’s not often that you see a Democrat endorse a Republican candidate. But the usual political bets are off in West Virginia.Republicans hold all three of the state’s House seats. But after West Virginia lost a district in the once-a-decade reapportionment process, there’s room for only two of them in the next Congress. That has left two Republican congressmen, Alex Mooney and David McKinley, fighting for the new Second District.Over the weekend, Senator Joe Manchin, the nation’s most famous right-leaning Democrat, announced in an ad that he was supporting McKinley, a longtime West Virginia politician and engineer by trade who was first elected to Congress in 2010. The primary is May 10.The endorsement adds another layer to an incumbent-on-incumbent race that has already become a proxy war of sorts. Donald Trump endorsed Mooney, while his former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, endorsed McKinley. Manchin joins Gov. Jim Justice — a Republican who left the Democratic Party after Trump was elected — in endorsing McKinley. Mooney, notably, is seen as a potential Senate challenger to Manchin in 2024.Mooney has a similar résumé to McKinley’s, although across state lines. He spent a decade in Maryland’s Legislature before leading its state Republican Party, history that has provided McKinley with alliterative fodder in his attack ads against “Maryland Mooney.”Both men are campaigning on typical Republican talking points, like immigration and gun rights. But they’ve dedicated most of their television ads to attacking each other, trading accusations of working with Democrats and betraying Trump.Perhaps twisting the knife for his Democratic critics, Manchin praised McKinley in his ad for rejecting what was once the centerpiece of President Biden’s social policy agenda — an agenda, of course, that was doomed in part by Manchin’s opposition.“For Alex Mooney and his out-of-state supporters to suggest David McKinley supported Build Back Better is an outright lie,” Manchin says to the camera.At the same time, Manchin is supporting one of the few Republicans who supported the Biden administration’s signature legislative achievement. McKinley was one of just a dozen Republicans who voted for Biden’s infrastructure legislation last year.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      The Don Jr. Road Show in Ohio Was No Joke

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      WEST CHESTER, OHIO — It’s a chilly, drizzly evening, but Donald Trump Jr. is putting on a red-hot show at Lori’s Roadhouse, a bar and music joint in a strip mall on the outskirts of Cincinnati. Pretending to be a befuddled, senile President Biden, Don Jr. staggers around the low stage, eyes unfocused, making confused gestures and blundering into the giant red-white-and-blue backdrop.The crowd, a couple of hundred MAGA fans and local Republican players, laps up the wickedness. This is Don Jr.’s last public appearance of the day on behalf of J.D. Vance, whose Senate candidacy was recently endorsed by Trump Sr. As at earlier stops, the audience whoops and laughs and hollers “Amen!” as Trump the Younger slashes at a series of targets: Democrats, the media, RINOs (Senator Mitt Romney is taking a serious beating), Big Tech, America’s “stupid” military leaders and so on.Don Jr. clearly inherited the family flair for showmanship. (Democrats would do well to keep an eye on his political development. In particular, the ladies here are gaga over him.) He deploys funny voices and goofy faces, his comic timing is spot on, and he has a vicious streak untempered by decency or accuracy. “The other side has literally taken the stance that it’s OK to be a groomer,” he charges, promoting the MAGAworld calumny that Democrats are pro-pedophile. Even on this dark topic he draws laughs by marveling that, in his younger days, “being antipedophile was something that we could all agree on!”Off to the side, chuckling awkwardly, hands jammed into his jeans pockets, stands Mr. Vance. Tall and burly, with carefully manicured facial hair, the candidate has already done his quick opening act and faded into the background like a good sidekick. He gazes attentively at the former president’s son, nodding appreciatively, clapping and grinning at all the appropriate (or, rather, inappropriate) moments. He takes out his phone to snap the occasional photo. Once or twice, he shoots a glance at the audience, as if to see how this show is playing. (Answer: very well.) Distinctly overshadowed, Mr. Vance is aware that, while his name may be on the yard signs and stickers spread around the bar, he is not who most folks have come to see.Because Mr. Vance is no longer the star of his own race to win Tuesday’s Republican primary in Ohio for U.S. Senate. The moment he got the much-coveted Trump tap on April 15, the election became about one thing only: whether the former president has the juice to propel an unexceptional candidate to victory.Mark Peterson for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s kingmaking ability is, in fact, the Big Question facing the entire G.O.P. this election cycle. Ohio is just the first test, the first time voters go to the polls in a race where the former president has put his political credibility and influence so solidly on the ballot. Mr. Vance is arguably a perfect test case for Mr. Trump: weak enough to need a boost but with enough potential to make him a worthwhile risk. Anyone still hoping to see the Trumpified G.O.P. return to sanity any time soon should be rooting for Mr. Vance to fail.The contest to replace Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring, was already among this cycle’s rowdiest and most expensive. Multiple conservatives have been jockeying to present themselves as the most MAGA-rific, with party players and moneymen picking favorites. Among the many contenders, Jane Timken, a former state Republican Party chairwoman, has been endorsed by multiple senators (Mr. Portman, Shelley Moore Capito, Joni Ernst and Deb Fischer) and denizens of Trumpworld (Kellyanne Conway, David Bossie and Corey Lewandowski). Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer, is backed by Senator Ted Cruz, the Club for Growth and Ohio Value Voters.Until recently, Mr. Vance had not been doing so well. Best known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” his 2016 memoir widely embraced as a blue-staters’ guide to red-state values and grievances, his past was a bit too checkered for some conservatives. He attended Yale Law. He worked as a venture capitalist. Most damning, he was an avowed Never Trumper during the 2016 presidential election — and we’re not talking gentle criticisms. He called Mr. Trump “noxious,” “reprehensible,” “an idiot” and “cultural heroin”; fretted over Trumpism’s racist elements; and privately suggested Mr. Trump was “America’s Hitler.”Like so much of the party, Mr. Vance has changed his tune, now prostrating himself before Mr. Trump with as much zeal as anyone. (Except maybe Kevin McCarthy. That level of sycophancy is something special.) Even so, rolling into April, Mr. Vance’s campaign chest was light (despite the generosity of his former boss, the tech billionaire Peter Thiel), and polls showed him lagging other conservatives, including Mr. Mandel, who has made his own dash to the hard right in recent years.Mr. Trump has said he chose to bless Mr. Vance because “we have to pick somebody that can win.” Why he decided Mr. Vance is that somebody has prompted head scratching. Certainly, there is nothing the former president enjoys as much as watching a former adversary grovel, and Mr. Vance has been happy to gush about how wrong he was in 2016 and what a great president Mr. Trump turned out to be. (Best of his lifetime!) Mr. Trump may have been swayed by Mr. Vance’s admirers, notably Don Jr., Tucker Carlson and Mr. Thiel, a megadonor to Mr. Trump as well as to Mr. Vance. Mr. Trump is said to have been put off by an ugly confrontation between Mr. Mandel and another candidate during a debate in March.Mr. Trump may also be taken with Mr. Vance’s quasi-fame and frequent TV appearances. The former president has a longstanding love affair with celebrities — and, perhaps better than anyone, grasps the value of celebrity in electoral politics.Whatever its roots, Mr. Trump’s endorsement hit the Ohio race like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, spreading chaos and carnage. Mr. Mandel’s supporters have taken it particularly hard, slagging Mr. Vance as an opportunist and Mr. Trump’s endorsement as, at best, ill informed.John Stover, the head of Ohio Value Voters, “firmly” believes the decision was heavily influenced by Mr. Thiel. Mr. Stover speculated to me recently: Who knows what exactly “came up” during the billionaire money man’s pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago?Before the former president and Mr. Vance appeared together at a rally in central Ohio a week ago Saturday, Mr. Stover’s group called on supporters to boycott the event. Alternatively, attendees were encouraged to boo when Mr. Vance was introduced. The group’s call to arms included a laundry list of the candidate’s past criticisms of Mr. Trump.The Club for Growth also finds itself feuding with Mr. Trump over its refusal to abandon Mr. Mandel. One of the group’s ads spotlighting Mr. Vance’s past attacks on Mr. Trump prompted the former president to have an aide fire off an obscene text to the group’s president, David McIntosh. The organization has doubled down with even more ad spending.Team Vance’s mission has been to hawk his status as “the only Trump-endorsed candidate” in the race. This is the verbatim message of a new TV ad running in the state, and it was one of the first things out of Don Jr.’s mouth at Lori’s Roadhouse.Even Mr. Vance seems to understand that what is at stake here has little to do with him.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Trump’s Shadow, Republicans Campaign Ahead of Ohio Primary

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      Donald Trump’s endorsement of the author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance has shaken up the Republican race for the first major Senate midterm election.COLUMBUS, Ohio — Josh Mandel’s wager was simple: No one would outflank him in mirroring Donald J. Trump, either on hard-right America First positions or the bellicose, come-at-me style of the former president.So, Mr. Mandel said of Black Lives Matter activists, “They are the racists, not us.” He stirred animosity toward migrants, including refugees from Afghanistan, and falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump. The Jewish grandson of a Holocaust survivor whose website features a Christian cross, Mr. Mandel stumped mostly in evangelical churches, claiming “there’s no such thing” as separation of church and state.For a long time, it worked. Mr. Mandel was the presumed front-runner in the crowded Republican field for U.S. senator from Ohio.But two weeks ago, the one person he sought most to impress — the former president himself — spurned Mr. Mandel, a former state treasurer, and bestowed his coveted endorsement on J.D. Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, remaking the race overnight.Mr. Vance, who had been trailing in polls and running low on money, has seen a surge in donations and support since Mr. Trump’s embrace, as the first major Senate midterm primary election entered its final weekend before Tuesday’s voting.And around the state, Republicans including Mr. Mandel; Mr. Vance; Mike Gibbons, a self-funded businessman; and State Senator Matt Dolan fanned out in a preview of national G.O.P. politics to come — different moons circling Mr. Trump’s sun.On Saturday, Mr. Vance campaigned with two far-right members of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Mr. Mandel hopscotched across the state’s big cities — Toledo, Columbus and Cincinnati — with a conservative ally of his own, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.To longtime acquaintances and observers of Mr. Mandel, 44, who early in his career promoted civility and bipartisanship, his unrequited embrace of Trumpism and divisiveness suggested there was a price on political calculation.“I see the desperation there these last few months,” said Matt Cox, a former Republican operative who was an early adviser to Mr. Mandel before a falling-out. “I think his strategy was: All right, Trump won Ohio by eight points twice. All I have to do to become the nominee is to become the most like Trump.”The candidate most left on the sidelines since Mr. Trump’s nod at Mr. Vance, according to polls, has been Jane Timken. The only woman running, Ms. Timken was endorsed by Ohio’s retiring senator, Rob Portman, a center-right throwback to an earlier Ohio G.O.P. who voted with Senate Democrats for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.The Senate candidate and former Republican state chair, Jane Timken, has been endorsed by Senator Rob Portman, who is vacating his seat. Gaelen Morse/ReutersMs. Timken has solid Trump-era credentials — she chaired the state party while Mr. Trump was in office — but she does not mimic the former president’s aggrieved style, which has been a key to unlocking the most fervent Republican voters. She has set herself apart from rivals who she says seek every day to get themselves “canceled on Twitter” with their statements and antics.In a debate in March, Mr. Mandel nearly got into a physical confrontation with Mr. Gibbons.At a Baptist church in Columbus on Saturday, Mr. Mandel took aim at popular targets of the right, including transgender people, Republicans with “jelly knees” like Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and the “liberal media in the back of the room” (just minutes after greeting reporters amicably by name in a private room).Fitting the setting, the largely older crowd in the pews called out encouraging “amens!” or groaned audibly when Mr. Mandel named enemies.“The reason that we’re going to win on Tuesday is because we have this army of Christian warriors throughout the state,’’ he pledged.One pastor present, Dan Wolvin, said he “felt sorry” for Mr. Trump over the Vance endorsement, saying he was “listening to the wrong people.” Still, Mr. Wolvin predicted the Trump nod would gain Mr. Vance “about five points” on Election Day, while conceding, “it’s a lot for Josh to make up.”Spurned or not, Mr. Mandel was still flying the Trump flag.“I supported President Trump yesterday. I support him today, and I’ll continue to support him tomorrow,” he said. He predicted the former president would return to the White House, “and I look forward to working with him.”The candidates, to varying degrees, all concur. Here are snapshots from around Ohio in the last weekend of campaigning.J.D. Vance in Newark, OhioJ.D. Vance campaigned with two far-right members of Congress, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida. Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesJ.D. Vance, the author and venture capitalist, bounded onto the stage at the Trout Club in Newark, Ohio, with the confidence of the nominal front-runner, a status bestowed by Mr. Trump’s endorsement on April 15.The crowd of about 75 in the bar and restaurant of a well-manicured country club had been warmed up by Mr. Gaetz and Ms. Greene, who ticked through the talking points of the fringe right: “medical tyranny,” “open borders,” “gender pediatric clinics” turning boys into girls, men in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports, The Walt Disney Company “grooming” children into homosexuals and transgender people.Mr. Vance breezed through some of the same themes, but he appeared more intent on previewing the larger issues he planned to argue in the general election to come.He castigated both parties for free trade agreements that he said had sent Ohio manufacturing to Mexico and China, for the “bipartisan decision to allow American Wall Street firms to get rich off the growth of China and not off the growth of the American middle class.” He also accused financial firms of allowing “the Chinese into this country, buying up our farmland, buying up our single-family homes, making it impossible for young families to buy a home, to own a stake in their own country.”“That is the game they play, and I’m running for the U.S. Senate to go and play a different game, a game where we put our citizens and the people in this room first,” he said to cheers.The people in that room — just off a verdant golf course, far away from the illegal immigrant, drug-infested cities that Mr. Vance speaks of on the stump — were hardly the down-and-out white workers central to his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” But an unspoken truth is, his audience is the true core of the pro-Trump vote in Ohio. The one income group that President Biden won in this state in 2020 was that of voters who earn less than $50,000. More affluent voters went for Mr. Trump.But economic themes in general — and the China threat in particular — resonated.“That’s in the DNA in Ohio,” said Representative Tim Ryan, the likely Democratic nominee for the coming Senate race.Mr. Vance was asked by a reporter why he invited Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz to barnstorm through Ohio with him on the closing weekend of the primary campaign.“There is nothing more disgusting in politics than the way that leadership asks you to stab your friends in the back,” he said before heading with them to West Chester, outside Cincinnati. He added for emphasis, “I’m not going to disavow them because some scumbag who doesn’t have the best interest of Ohio at heart wants me to.”Jonathan WeismanMike Gibbons in Dublin, OhioMike Gibbons pumped nearly $17 million of his own money into the race. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMr. Gibbons likes to sport a navy blue suit coat and red tie reminiscent of Mr. Trump. He has a habit of reminding voters that he is a businessman, not a politician. And he speaks often of how, in 1989, he started his investment banking and financial advisory firm in a small Cleveland office with nothing but a desk and a phone.But imitation did not win Mr. Gibbons the endorsement of the former president he so sought to emulate, and he is closing out the final stretch of the primary much the way he started: with his own gumption and personal wealth.In an interview on his campaign bus Saturday, Mr. Gibbons emphasized his lifelong Ohio roots and business credentials as the best fit for Ohio voters.“I was shocked,” Mr. Gibbons said of Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Vance, referring to his opponent as someone who “flew in from the West Coast.” He added: “Ohioans should be insulted.”Outside, a couple of volunteers mingled in a grocery store parking lot near Columbus, picking up Gibbons swag and eating pizza, before fanning out to knock on doors.Mr. Gibbons grew up in Parma, a working-class suburb outside of Cleveland. He was a one-time professional football player, and at 37, he founded Brown Gibbons Lang & Company. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2018, and this time has pumped roughly $17 million into his campaign, making him the largest self-funder in the race.He drew some scrutiny in March for comments he made in 2013 on China and Asian people that used offensive stereotypes and was later criticized for the heated debate stage encounter with Mr. Mandel.Mr. Gibbons served as Mr. Trump’s Ohio fundraising co-chair in 2016. But in one crucial way, his supporters say, his path has sharply diverged from Mr. Trump’s: Mr. Gibbons did not receive a multimillion-dollar loan from his father to launch his business empire.“I like that he is from Parma, Ohio — real down-to-earth kind of guy who worked hard for everything he has in life and earned his way,” said Michael Palcisko, 54, a schoolteacher and military veteran in Cleveland.Jazmine Ulloa and Kevin WilliamsMatt Dolan in North Royalton, Ohio Unlike the other leading Republican candidates in the race, State Senator Matt Dolan acknowledges President Biden is the nation’s legitimate leader.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesOn an overcast Saturday morning, Mr. Dolan knocked on doors in an affluent suburb just south of Cleveland. He was making a last-minute push to get voters to the polls, and on his target list were registered Republicans who had yet to cast a ballot. But on his route, he was just as likely to encounter Democrats and independents who were backing his candidacy — or simply cheering him on.“If it has to be a Republican, I hope it is you,” Rich Evans, 69, a retired educator, told him, as he stopped manicuring his lawn to shake hands.From the beginning, Mr. Dolan, who has served in the statehouse since 2017 and whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, has been walking in his own lonely lane. He is the only Republican candidate who supports Mr. Trump but has attempted to put some distance between himself and Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump “did a lot of good things for Ohio,” Mr. Dolan said. But he said he wanted his own campaign to remain focused on Ohio. He wanted to get back to discussing policy, and he certainly did not want to re-litigate the last election.“I am not looking backwards,” he said.Like the other Republicans in the race, he said he wants to secure the border, cut the flow of fentanyl into the state and tackle inflation. But he also said he could do more than his competitors to bring workers to the state and put together a unique economic development agenda.He’s hardly a never Trumper. He said he voted for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election, opposed both impeachment cases against him and has said he would support the former president should he become the 2024 Republican nominee.But on Jan. 6, Mr. Dolan did not shy away from criticizing Mr. Trump for spreading lies about the results of the November 2020 election, writing on Twitter, “Real leaders lead not manipulate.” Unlike the other leading Republican candidates in the race, he also acknowledges President Biden is the nation’s legitimate leader.It was a stance that Pat Ryan, 64, said he respected. Standing at his front door, Ryan, who considers himself a Democrat, said he planned to vote in the Republican primary this year because of Mr. Dolan. “I looked at all the candidates, and he’s the most honest one,” he said.Jazmine Ulloa More